Little Miss Sunshine (All You Need Is Love)

August 19, 2012
1 Corinthians 13
Highlands UMC, Denver

Thought for Meditation:
Whatever happens, we’re a family. And what’s important is that we love each other.

— Cheryl Hoover, Little Miss Sunshine 

Today we’re continuing the Summer Movie Sermon Series
with Little Miss Sunshine --
the 2006 independent film, not the children's book --
about a dysfunctional family driving across the southwest.
You may have heard this saying,
from a poem by Robert Frost:
Home is where, when you have to go there,
they have to take you in.
At the beginning of Little Miss Sunshine,
that’s about the nicest thing you can say
about the Hoover family.

Cheryl – divorced and remarried, mom of two, secret smoker,
too busy to cook so she brings home KFC for dinner every night –
is on her way to pick up her brother Frank
from the hospital.
On the phone as she drives,
she defends the burden by reminding her husband,
“He has nowhere else to go.”
Frank, a professor and Proust scholar,
has attempted suicide,
after losing the man he loves to his professional rival,
losing his job and his home, and learning
his rival has been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Frank now has to room with his teenage nephew Dwayne,
Cheryl’s son,
who reads Nietzsche, hates everyone,
and has taken a vow of silence
until he achieves his goal of becoming a test pilot
with the air force.
The first night that Frank stays with him,
Dwayne writes him a note that says,
“Welcome to hell.”

Cheryl’s husband, Richard,
is a motivational speaker,
with a Nine-Step Refuse to Lose Program
that is just on the brink of getting the investors he needs
to take it to the big-time.
For now, his audience is limited to 10
less than enthusiastic students
in a night school classroom.

Living with them,
is Richard’s father, Edwin,
whom everyone calls Grandpa.
He swears like a sailor,
advises Dwayne to sleep around,
likes adult magazines,
and is generally grumpy and bitter.
Grandpa recently got kicked out of his retirement home
for taking up a drug habit (heroin) in his golden years.
Again, Home is where, when you have to go there,
they have to take you in.

And then there is Olive,
Richard and Cheryl’s 7-year-old daughter,
who has recently been introduced
to the world of beauty pageants
thanks to her aunt in California.
The movie opens with Olive watching,
and carefully imitating,
the facial expressions and gestures
of the successful Miss America contestant
being awarded the crown.

It is Olive’s hopes and dreams
that propel the family to take a road trip together,
800 miles from Albuquerque, New Mexico,
to Redondo Beach, California,
in an ancient yellow Volkswagen van,
so she can compete in the Little Miss Sunshine contest.
Now, Olive is a charming, loving, and confident little girl,
but she does not quite fit the image
of the typical beauty pageant contestant.
She’s… chubby, with thick, out-of-date glasses,
long brown hair that is always well brushed
but never styled,
and a heart that embraces all of her eccentric family.
Grandpa has been coaching her
on a dance routine for the talent competition,
but no one has actually seen what they’re working on.
(That becomes significant later on.)

They are quirky, complicated, dysfunctional characters.
Kinda like most of us.
And at the beginning of this journey,
most of them don’t really like each other.
Only Olive and Grandpa really want to go to the pageant,
but for various reasons, the others all have to tag along.
When Dwayne agrees to go,
he writes on his notepad,
“Okay. But I’m not going to have any fun.”
And Frank commiserates with,
“Yeah, I think we’re all with you there.”
Which is why Cheryl’s statement to her children,
today’s Thought for Meditation,
that what matters is that we love each other,
is more than just a sappy cliché.
It takes 800 miles and a mixture of grief and absurdity
to get them to that point.

As they travel across the mostly desert landscape,
things keep going wrong.
The clutch on the van goes out,
and because it’s old there are no parts available.
The mechanic who gives them the bad news
also explains that they really only need the clutch
to get to 2nd gear;
if they can park on a hill and just coast
until they reach about 30 miles per hour,
they should be fine from there.
But there are a limited number of hills
conveniently located on their route.
So each time they have to stop and then start again,
everyone has to get out and push,
then one at a time, run alongside the van
and jump inside while it’s moving.
Frank reminds his sister as they push,
“Did I mention that I’m the pre-eminent Proust scholar
in the country?”

Richard and Cheryl are so angry leaving one rest stop
that they actually forget Olive,
and have to circle back to pick her up,
not daring to slow down too much
as they cruise through the gas station parking lot
and she runs alongside.
Later on in the journey,
the horn gets stuck,
drawing angry glares
and causing a motorcycle cop
to pull them over,
with hilarious results.

In the interest of not spoiling
some of the major plot developments,
I won’t describe all the things that go wrong.
I will say that in everything,
from minor irritations
to major losses,
there is absurd, awkward, sometimes painful,
ultimately hopeful humor.

Richard, the father,
has based his motivational program
on his frequently-repeated belief
that there are two kinds of people in the world:
winners,
and losers.

The irony is, of course,
that every member of this family,
at some point during this weekend road trip,
looks an awful lot like
what society would call a loser.

Both because they are not “winning” in life
according to most external definitions of success,
but also because they each experience loss,
especially the loss of a cherished dream.
Frank has lost love, employment, prestige,
and hope.
Grandpa has lost community and independence.
Cheryl is losing patience with her family.
Richard learns his motivational program
will not get the investors he needs.
Dwayne learns he is colorblind,
and will not be able to fly jets.
And because this is not a Disney movie,
Olive doesn’t win the trophy
or the title of Little Miss Sunshine.
In fact, she is banned from ever again
entering a beauty pageant
in the state of California.
(As a side note, and without giving too much away,
I’ll just say that Olive’s talent performance
makes everyone really uncomfortable,
but it also sheds light
on why beauty pageants for 7-year-olds
should make us uncomfortable in general.)

To lose, to fail, to make mistakes:
these are part of the human condition.
We are all losers in that sense.

But what makes the difference
in the face of loss
is not some motivational mantra
about the will to win
or even having tried your hardest.
What makes the difference for the Hoovers,
what leads them out of the hell they start in,
is finding their way back
to loving each other,
and being family.

St Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth
is known for the chapter we read today
on the spiritual gift of love.
Of course, it’s the most frequently chosen Scripture
for weddings,
but it wasn’t written with romantic love in mind.
It is part of a bigger point that Paul is making
about what matters in the community of the church.
And what matters, Paul says,
is not which gift you have,
or whether your gifts are better or more important
than someone else’s.
It’s not a competition,
with winners and losers.

In the previous chapter he tells them,
you are all members of the same body;
together, you are the Body of Christ,
and none of you can be winners
without all of you.
Which means that the greatest spiritual gift,
the one that gives all the others meaning,
is the gift of love.
Not sappy, Hallmark-card, flowers and chocolates,
sentimental feelings.
(Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
But fierce, strong, hardworking love:
Genuine care for the wellbeing of others.
Investment in relationship
through the disciplines of patience and kindness.
Willingness to put the best interests of others
as equal with your own.
None of your talents or sacrifice or knowledge,
not even your faith,
has any value or meaning
if you do not have love.

Love is patient; love is kind;
love is not envious or boastful
or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing,
but rejoices in the truth.

One of the things I love about this movie
is that the members of the Hoover family all mess up
in one or another of these ways.
And don’t we all?
But when the rubber hits the road,
they stand by one another.
They comfort each other in times of grief;
they support each other’s hopes and dreams.
They want to protect one another from heartache,
but when heartache comes,
they would rather get up and look foolish together
than silently allow others to pass judgment.

By the time they leave the pageant,
it seems that even Richard may have realized
that there are not two kinds of people in the world.
There are not simply winners and losers.
Rather, everyone figures out along the way:
you win some,
you lose some.
And what matters is having family
to accept you as you are,
to celebrate or mourn with you,
whatever the journey brings.

For those of us who follow Jesus,
part of the good news is that family is not limited
to the people we’re related to by blood and marriage.
All of us who do our best
to make up the Body of Christ:
we are family, whatever happens.
And what matters is that we love each other.
Even when the going gets tough,
even if we don’t always agree
or even like each other very much.
Even when society calls us losers.
After all, Jesus said that the first will be last,
and the last will be first.
And he showed us the face of God
by loving and living among those society called “losers.”
So perhaps there’s hope for us all of us
who don’t quite measure up
in the beauty pageants of life.
Hope, and faith, and above all else –
if we’re willing to keep pushing the bus together
and making sure nobody gets left behind –
love.
May it be so for you and for me.
Amen.

The Gospel According to Finding Nemo

The Gospel According to Finding Nemo
Highlands & Montclair UMCs, Denver, CO
Sunday, October 26, 2008

Isaiah 43:1-2

The world is full of many joys and wonders,
as well as many dangers, toils and snares.
When you’re a little fish in a big ocean,
it’s sometimes hard to know which is which.

Marlin is a clownfish, orange and white stripes,
living with his wife Coral in a beautiful anemone home
right on the edge of the reef,
where the sand below drops off to deep water.
They are the proud expectant parents of 400 little clownfish,
incubating in their jelly-like eggs,
when tragedy strikes:
a barracuda attacks.
Marlin tries to protect his family
and is knocked unconscious.
He wakes to find that his wife
and all but one of the eggs
are gone.
Devastated, Marlin promises little Nemo,
as the remaining egg is named,
never to let anything happen to him.

Nemo turns out to be a spirited young clownfish
with one undersized fin
who is eager to explore the world
and excited to start school.
His father has grown extremely cautious
and overprotective of his only son,
worried about all the things that can go wrong,
especially because of what he sees
as Nemo’s disability, the “lucky” fin.
The joy that Marlin once felt in his home and family
becomes clouded by his fear
that he could lose it all
again.
And when Marlin follows Nemo’s class
on their field trip to the drop-off,
warning and scolding Nemo not to swim in open water,
Nemo’s frustration turns into defiance
and he swims out to touch a small boat anchored nearby.
Before he can return to the safety of the reef,
two divers appear,
and one scoops up Nemo in a little plastic bag,
the other blinding Marlin with a camera flash
and preventing him from getting to Nemo in time.
The boat speeds away
and Marlin’s worst nightmare has come true.

Marlin then begins a long and difficult journey
to find Nemo and bring him home,
accompanied and helped along the way
by a blue fish – a regal tang – named Dory,
very sweet by nature
but troubled by persistent short-term memory loss.
Nemo ends up in a small fish tank in a dentist’s office,
where the other inhabitants of the tank
help him try to escape
before he becomes the next casualty
of the dentist’s niece
and her enjoyment of shaking bags of goldfish.
In particular, a Moorish Idol fish named Gill,
the only other tank member
to come from the ocean
rather than a pet store,
takes Nemo under his fin.

Along the way, Marlin and Dory encounter many surprising creatures:
There is a group of 3 sharks
who are trying to rise above their nature,
and reform their fish-eating ways -
their motto is "Fish are friends, not food."
They barely avoid becoming lunch for an anglerfish,
which has a kind of built-in glowing lure
attached to its body.
They meet a school of silvery fish that do visual impressions
in their group formations.
They have a narrow escape
from beautiful but deadly box jellyfish.
A school of sea turtles helps them navigate the East Australian Current,
and offers Marlin a different perspective on parenting
than he has been used to —
a little less neurotic worrywart,
a little more laid-back surfer dude.
A whale swallows them up
to bring them in close to Sydney Harbor.
And a pelican named Nigel takes them the final distance
to the dentist’s office where Nemo is waiting.

Along the way, both father and son
learn to better understand each other,
and to overcome their own fears
to embrace life more fully.
Dory and Crush the sea turtle
teach Marlin that he cannot keep Nemo
from experiencing life.
That if he never lets anything happen to his son,
nothing will ever happen to him.
And although sometimes there’s no way of knowing
whether or not something bad might happen,
the only way to get through life
is to “Let go,” and “Just keep swimming!”
And Gill helps Nemo gain confidence in himself,
as his own damaged fin has never stopped him
from going after his goals.

In some ways, Finding Nemo blends together
the three “Lost” parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke:
like the shepherd seeking the sheep,
Marlin goes in search of his lost son,
leaving behind the safety of the world he knows,
putting at risk what is left to him.
As in the story of the Prodigal Son,
Nemo is separated from his family
by a decision made out of youthful defiance
that comes to regret
and seeks to return home.
And if we want to stretch a little,
Dory is kind of like the woman with the coins…
only it’s more like her marbles that she’s lost…
but there is definitely great rejoicing when she finds them!

It’s not an exact parallel, of course;
the film is a full-fledged story, not a parable.
I think the main difference is
that Marlin is not a stand-in for God
as the shepherd and the father are
in the parables that Jesus told.
Marlin is himself a “person” in need of saving.
He needs to be saved not from the dangers of the world,
but from his fear of danger,
so that he can lay claim to the abundant life
available to him.
Marlin is so obsessed with past tragedy
and fear of the future
that he is robbed of the one thing he needs,
which is to be in the moment with his son.
Dory, who knows nothing beyond the present moment,
is the one who helps him get back that gift.

Nemo needs to find faith in his own abilities
and an understanding of his father’s concerns.
He learns to respect his father’s worries and limits
because he himself comes face to face with real danger.

And Dory, whom the film’s director and writer describe
as an “angel” by nature,
always seeking to comfort and help others,
becomes an important part of the family,
finding that Marlin’s care for her and trust in her
helps her to remember things better,
helps her not to get lost or forget,
and allows her to feel that she is home.

If you are a parent,
and have had the experience of caring for a young child
I imagine Marlin’s situation hits home:
the fear of losing your child
is a real and powerful threat.
You want to protect them, keep them safe
as long and as fully as possible.
But the time comes
when you have to let the little one
venture out into the world on their own,
give them a chance, as Crush the surfer sea turtle says,
to see what they’ll do “flying solo.”

Some of us might identify more with Nemo:
longing for adventure,
unsure of our own capabilities
or our place in the world,
but certain that there are wonderful and exciting places to see
and people to meet out there.

Others, like Dory,
are longing for a place to belong,
a relationship that grounds us
and helps us make sense of our story.
The world can be a big and scary place.
The church has often focused on this view,
emphasizing the “dangers, toils and snares” of life:

The world is seen as a place of temptation,
posing all kinds of risks to the life of faith.
This is the Marlin school of theology –
monsters lurk around every corner,
so venture out only when necessary,
and then do so with extreme vigilance.
The Nemo school of theology, on the other hand,
holds that the world is the gift of God,
to be explored, dealt with, delighted in,
and within which we learn who we are
and who God is in the scheme of things.
Both schools of theology live side by side in the church
and are often a source of tension.*

Ultimately, the film, along with our scriptures for today,
come out on the side of affirming life
with all its risks and dangers
as something beautiful and holy,
a gift from God.
We are called to boldness in pursuing an abundant life
not because our fears are groundless
and not to become reckless with our lives
but so that we don’t forfeit our lives
by refusing to live them;
because there’s no other way
to experience the fullness of life that God offers.

Finding Nemo is a Disney movie,
so of course it has a happy ending.
We long for that happy ending in our own lives,
the moment when everything comes together and makes sense,
when we know we don't have to worry any more.
Our faith teaches us we can have that happy ending,
but not necessarily in this life.

In this life, God doesn’t promise
to always set things right.
But God promises to work for good in all circumstances.
God does not promise that we will not know suffering,
whether in the form of pain, of fear, of separation, or of grief;
But God does promise that suffering is not the final word,
that it is but one stage of the journey toward redemption.
And God promises to journey with us,
whether we pass through water or fire,
God has redeemed us and claimed us as God’s own.
God is the brave shepherd
and the careful woman
and the loving father
who seeks us out for relationship,
giving us the freedom to decide how we will live,
rejoicing with us when we choose life abundant in God’s care.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.


*from Movies that Matter, by Richard Leonard, p. 127.

The Gospel According to Pleasantville

Once upon a time
there was a boy and a girl
who found themselves in a strange new world.
They were brother and sister, twins,
children of the 80s, teens in the 90s,
faced with bad news at every turn:
divorced parents
continual decline in available jobs after graduation,
ozone depletion and the HIV epidemic.
Jennifer found her sense of identity
in being one of the “bad girls,”
smoking and sleeping around,
while David took refuge in watching endless reruns
of a black-and-white 1950s sitcom
called Pleasantville.

Pleasantville depicted a world so much more… pleasant
than reality:
It was neater, cleaner, more polite and more predictable,
where mother starts each day
by preparing a big hot breakfast for her children and husband:
mountains of pancakes and waffles,
eggs and bacon and ham,
and each night father comes back from work
and announces, “Honey, I’m home!”

Through a strange turn of events,
David and Jennifer find themselves suddenly transported
inside the world of Pleasantville: they become Bud and Mary Sue,
straight-laced 50’s teenagers,
as monochromatic as everything around them.

David, with his encyclopedic knowledge of the show,
finds it easy to interact with others
in the role of Bud, the boy next door,
and does all he can to encourage Jennifer –
now Mary Sue –
to stick to the original script.

But where Bud sees innocence to be preserved,
pleasantness to be protected,
Mary Sue sees potential for people to escape their geekiness
and become “attractive” and “cool.”
And in spite of Bud’s warnings and pleas
to just “go with the program,”
Mary Sue goes out with Skip,
the captain of the basketball team,
and on their first date, she takes him to Lover’s Lane
where they do a lot more than just hold hands!
On his way home from this novel experience,
Skip sees the strangest thing:
a single red rose,
brilliantly scarlet
in the midst of the grey rosebush.

It doesn’t take long before Skip tells all the boys about his experience
and Mary Sue shares her knowledge and attitude with the girls,
and little by little, starting with bubblegum and taillights,
spots of color start to appear in Pleasantville.
The color is seen as an aberration, a freak occurrence,
and one young woman whose tongue has turned pink
is told kindly by her doctor,
“It’s probably nothing to worry about.
Just cut back on greasy foods and chocolate.”

With the excitement of the color
come some unexpected consequences.
The boys’ basketball team,
the undefeated Pleasantville Lions,
formerly could not fail to shoot the ball
directly into the basket every time.
Now they all miss.

Bill Johnson, the “soda jerk,” –
the guy who works at the soda shop –
discovers that he does not have to do every task
in exactly the same order every time
and starts thinking about how meaningless it is
to make hamburgers all the time
and how much he enjoys painting a mural
on the windows at Christmas.
Mary Sue had discovered early on
that the reason the firemen in Pleasantville
are always rescuing cats
is that nothing there will burn.
Yet one night,
after Mary Sue explains to her Pleasantville mother
all about Lover’s Lane and sex,
the tree outside their home
bursts into Technicolor flame.
Bud is the one who gets the firemen to come –
finally figuring out
that although they don’t respond to “Fire!”,
they get going in a hurry when he yells “Cat!”
and Bud is the one who has to show them
how to use the hoses to put out the fire.
The town experiences rain –
real rain –
for the first time.

The more time David and Jennifer remain in Pleasantville
as Bud and Mary Sue,
little by little revealing more of what they know
of the possibilities of life beyond Pleasantville’s script,
the more choices people have,
the more color appears,
in people and in the world around them,
and the more the men of the town are greatly concerned
by the changes occurring around them.

Pleasantville is, in part, an intentional parable
for Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.
It’s not an exact parallel,
and there are other layers of meaning
that enrich and deepen the symbolism of the film.
But David/Bud is, perhaps like Adam,
satisfied with the status quo:
content to keep the pristine world within its narrow limits,
trying not to upset the apple cart,
accepting of the order of things
as the way they’re supposed to be.
Jennifer in the place of Mary Sue
is the stereotypical Eve:
although the story in Genesis does not identify sex
as part of the “original sin,”
that is what most people think of
when they think of sin, Eve, and Eden.
And sex is what Jennifer brings to Pleasantville,
to the delight of the boys and girls at school,
and the consternation of their parents.
The imagery of the forbidden fruit –
in our culture assumed to be an apple –
shows up at the lake at the end of Lover’s Lane,
where Margaret picks a bright red apple
and gives it to David.
The image comes up again
in the mural that David/Bud and Mr Johnson paint
on the wall of the police station later on.

There’s no real “snake” in this story,
no external trickster
convincing the unsuspecting innocents to choose disobedience.
Just David and Jennifer,
who drop into this world of monochrome pleasantness,
the only ones who know there is any alternative,
the only ones with the ability to choose something different.
And the choices they make
set in motion a chain of events
and opportunities for others to make choices
that turns the whole world of Pleasantville upside down.

The movie has a largely positive view
regarding the freedom to make choices.
The story acknowledges that the openness
the teenagers bring to Pleasantville
includes the possibility for anger, violence, and fear
as well as love, learning, and passion.
And there are many who are threatened by the changes.
They react first by violence:
breaking the windows of the soda shop
where Bill Johnson has painted a mural of a naked woman;
vandalizing the colored booths and gumball machines;
and burning the books that are no longer blank,
but filled with stories of love and learning and freedom.
And when things settle down,
the powers that be respond by trying to control the town,
laying down a code of conduct
that includes closing the library,
limiting the music that may be played,
prohibitions on the sale of umbrellas
or other preparation for inclement weather,
mattresses of greater than 38” wide,
and paint in colors other than black, white, or grey;
and a “non-changist” school curriculum
that emphasizes continuity over alteration.

Yet ultimately the changes cannot be stopped or controlled
and Bud makes an impassioned case for the positive value
of recognizing the capacity for all kinds of feelings and choices
that exists in each person.
It turns out that sex isn’t the only, or even the primary, reason
that most of the people change to color.
For Jennifer, who in her own words, has “had more sex than anyone,”
the change comes when she sends her boyfriend away,
turning aside from her former sense of identity through sex,
and stays in her room, wearing her glasses, reading.
For David, the defining moment is when he stands up for his mother
who is being harassed by a group of teenage boys,
and it is his punch that both brings violence to Pleasantville
and brings out his own willingness to engage with the world
and to take risks for others.

The choice to turn aside from the obvious path
and the very ability to make a choice freely
comes with a variety of complex and interconnected consequences.
But what is the alternative?

There are many other creation stories in the world,
some ancient, some recent.
Some scholars have explored ancient texts
and developed new interpretations of these old, old stories.
One version of the story of Adam and Eve in the garden
describes the tree from which they eat as the Tree of Life,
and their transgression is in eating the fruit before it is ripe.
As a consequence,
they are confused at the sense of separation they feel
from the animals, plants, and the rest of creation.
But God assures them that although the fruit was not ripe,
the seeds of learning and caring will grow inside them
as they travel the path of wonder, the path of emptiness,
the path of making, and the path of coming home.

At its heart, the story of Eve and Adam
is an attempt to answer the questions of
why we suffer, why we die,
why life is not as good as we think it could or should be,
why we do not feel as close to God as we long to be,
why we humans interact with the world, with God, and with each other
in a way that seems so different from all the other animals.

The story tries to answer these questions
by saying that Once Upon a Time,
things were the way we imagine they could and should be.
Once Upon a Time,
life was perfect. Flawless. Pleasant.
And people did what they weren’t supposed to do
and that’s why life isn’t so great now.

There’s a lot of shame and guilt put on the choice of freedom
over blind obedience
but what kind of life would we have,
what kind of world would we have
if we never knew we had another option?
The story of Adam and Eve in the garden,
like the story of Jennifer and David in Pleasantville,
is a story of moving from a very limited awareness
of the options available in one’s life
to a recognition of the broad and abundant scope
of what life in all its fullness
might mean.
We might not agree with the choices people make,
but how could we choose good
if we were not free to make a different choice?
Redemption in Pleasantville
isn't primarily about being forgiven for one’s sins,
but instead is about the opening up of one’s life
to the possibility of wholeness:
pleasant is all well and good,
in fact, it is very pleasant… up to a point.
But there is so much more than pleasant
in the life abundant that God offers us in Christ.
There is room for silly, and sexy, and curious.
There is room for anger, and passion, and grief.
There is room for God in every part of our lives.
Nothing is too small, too big, too shameful, or too private
to bring before God.
We get to choose how we will live:
no script, no set plot or secret plan for our lives
that we will be punished for not figuring out
and following to the letter.
It can feel like a curse at times,
the freedom
the not knowing how things will turn out.
We have the option of turning toward God
or turning away.
Sometimes we don’t know which way a path will lead
until we have followed it a little while.
But the good news is that God is always available to us,
always walking with us along the road out of Eden,
always willing to help open our eyes
when we are ready
to see the Technicolor world that surrounds us
and the colors that sprout and bloom like seeds
within our hearts.
Amen.


[Preached at The Open House at Montclair UMC, October 12, 2008]